Sunday, September 13, 2015

A True Story for Rosh Hashanah

courtesy of tesobe

Although Elul is the month of
repentance, for me it is also a month of cooking, baking, and freezing in
preparation for all the Yom Tov meals of Tishrei. Still,
I don’t want to ignore my spiritual preparation so every year I try to attend
at least one pre-Rosh Hashanah lecture. These lectures cover a number of
topics: repentance, the shofar, prayer, and on. My favorite topic, though, is
the AkeidatYitzhak, the story of how G-d tells Avraham
to sacrifice his son, his only son, the one he loves, Yitzhak, and then just as
Avraham raises his knife to slay his son on the altar, G-d commands him to
stop.

My affinity to this subject began years ago when I was in grammar school. The
rabbi at our Reform Temple did not just lead the congregation; he was a close
family friend and had a strong influence on me. He was captivated by the Akeidat
Yitzhak and spoke about it in religious school sermons, passing that
fascination on to me.

As I approached my thirteenth birthday I began
my Bat Mitzvah lessons with the new rabbi who had replaced our family friend. I
was thrilled to learn that my Torah portion wasVayera, the one which
begins with three angels visiting Avraham after hisBrit Milahand ends with theAkeidat
Yitzhak.

The custom in our Temple at that time was to
read just a small section of the entire Torah portion on Friday night. There
was no doubt in my mind which section I would read. The new rabbi did not share
my enthusiasm, however. He thought the verses dealing with Avraham’s bargaining
with G-d over Sodom and Amorrah would be far more appropriate. I was a stubborn
twelve-year-old, though, and in the end I read theAkeidat Yitzhak. My speech was about making sacrifices for my faith.

The Bat Mitzvah experience probably had a lot to
do with my forage into traditional Judaism and my commitment to keeping the
commandments of the Torah. Seven years later I married and made a kosher,
Shabbat-observant home. Twelve years after that my husband and I moved our
family to Israel.

Once in Israel, it was easy to find profound,
pre-Rosh Hashanah classes on my level. At one of lectures onAkeidat Yitzhakthe rabbi made a statement that I have never
forgotten. He said that parents should be as ready to sacrifice their children
for Torah as Avraham was ready to sacrifice Yitzhak. Not that we should, G-d
forbid, put our children on an altar and slit their throats. Rather we should
do all we can to ensure our children will be able to live a Torah-true life. He
brought down as an example how families in Europe would send their young sons
far away to good yeshivas and often see them only once a year at Pesach.

It was his words that gave me the emotional
strength to deal with the fact that my third son had chosen, at the age of
fourteen, to go to a yeshiva high school three hours away from home. There were
many other yeshivas closer to us but this was the place where he felt he had
the best opportunity to grow into a Torah-true Jew.

And it was those words I recalled several years
later during the Torah reading on the second day of Rosh Hashanah. In our
synagogue the chanting of the portion is done by a group of volunteers. One of
our favorite readers had lost his son in a terror attack the previous spring.
That loss did not keep him from reading, though.

He was chanting in his calm, melodious voice and
then, all of a sudden, he paused. For a fraction of a second I thought that
there was a problem with the Torah scroll and it would need to be replaced by
another one from inside the ark.

Immediately afterwards I understood when I heard
the next verse read aloud, “Avraham, Avraham, and he said, I am here and He
said Do not harm the boy, nor do anything to him.”

There was a silence in the synagogue that could
be felt. From above, in the women’s section, I kept my eyes downcast, afraid to
look at my neighbor, unwilling to see the pain in my eyes reflected in hers.

The silence lasted several more minutes. The
congregation was patient, sharing our friend’s pain. And then with a slightly
quavering voice the bereaved father began reading. He paused again. Again we
waited patiently, our hearts aching. And then he continued his reading with
tears in his voice.

“I know now that you are one who fears G-d and
have not withheld your son from me.”

Several years have passed since he chanted those
awesome words. In those few emotional moments, though, I received a powerful
lesson about faith and love of G-d, a lesson stronger than any of the lectures
I have ever attended.

May we all learn the lesson and may no more of our
children be sacrificed.

Tishrei: the Jewish month in
which Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, and Sukkot occur

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Aim of Blog

Emunah, faith in God, does not mean believing only good things will happen; it means believing that whatever God does is for the best. I wrote these words at a time when drive-by shootings and suicide bombers had become almost weekly, if not daily, tragedies. Now, more than ten years later, the words are no less true. Whatever HaShem does is for the best. It is my hope to post articles, advice, and homey stories everyweekwhich will reinforce this fact. And now, a special thanks to:

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About Me

Born in Wichita, Kansas, I became a Baalat Teshuva, newly religious, in Phoenix, Arizona while attending ASU. After twelve years of marriage my husband and I made Aliyah with five children and settled in Shilo in the heart of Israel. Two more children joined the family as have daughters-in-law, sons-in-law, and grandchildren, Baruch HaShem. My favorite past times are learning, sewing, hiking, reading, cooking, baking, enjoying my family and friends, and, of course, writing. My first novel, Sondra’s Search, was published in 2007 and I am working on the sequel.